Month: May 2016

Let me say this to start this thing, which is equal parts glowing review and very sour rant: Coronado Brewing “Berry The Hatchet” is a DAZZLING bottle o’ beer. It’s light and fresh and low in alcohol and perfectly balanced and is going to be one of the best summer beers made by anybody in 2016. I tasted this and immediately thought of all those great Euro fruitbiers that I’ve drunk and loved since I was in college; summer beers that, for me, almost define what hot weather in Washington, DC, where I went to school, was all about. But…

…because I am a fella of a certain age, I get guys sidling up to me in brewery tasting rooms and at bars and saying things to the effect of, “Can you believe all these foofy beers? ‘Infused” this and ‘Barrel-aged’ that. Can they not just make a damned Pale ale and be satisfied with it?”.

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One of the lesser known facts about yours truly is that, for several years, I worked as an ad agency creative director back in North and South Carolina (I have an online portfolio, if anyone’s curious…and, if you are, seek professional help) doing primarily copy but also a LOT of design. I don’t do it much anymore and I don’t broadcast the fact but I still do the occasional piece of design, mostly for Washington wineries. But that experience has forever made me a HUGE fan of great design work and I’ve been known to be nosy enough to drop am email to a winery or brewery that’s suffering from an especially bad label and say, “Uh, dude, your graphics need some help.”

Graphics say a lot about a business – any business. And one that’s primarily centered on aesthetics, like beverage makers, has a real NEED for some design that speaks about the products and the people. Last week, I got a beautiful box from my pals at Full Sail Brewing. It was simultaneously a glimpse at their all new, gorgeous packages and a retake on the line of their core beers.

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Brewery Ommegang, the Belgian-style beer company in Cooperstown, had a huge night Friday as the 2016 World Beer Cup awards were announced in Philadelphia.

Ommegang took home the title of World Champion in the category of “mid-sized brewery,” along with three medals for individual beers. World Champions were also honored in the categories of very small, small and large breweries, and large and small brewpubs.

The World Beer Cup contest was presented in conjunction with the annual Craft Brewers Conference and BrewersExpo America, held this week in Philadelphia. The competition attracted 6,596 different beer entries from 1,907 breweries representing 55 countries. That was a 38.5 percent increase in the number of entries from the 2014 World Beer Cup.

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Almost two years ago to the day, I posted this rabble-rousing little beer bomb, here in the brand new ThePourFool website and instantly got a mini-flood of emails from disgruntled Euro-Snots who wrote things like – quoting now –

“Have you even actually tasted a Flanders ale? If you had, there’s no goddamned way you’d ever write something like this…”

“So, let’s get this straight: American ‘craft brewing’ is not real brewing. It’s more like a hobby that’s been taken up by way too many people who don’t actually understand beer. This ‘Crux’ bunch (stupid name) should stick to making the kind of moron-level beers that all their other slacker pals are cranking out, all the British crap that only mouth-breathers drink.”

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It wasn’t too long ago that the Pale Ale, in either authentic English or nouveau American Pale Ale (“APA”) version, was little more than an afterthought. I went a period of almost five years before I could amass more than five or six Pales that got me excited enough to write about them. It’s becoming, Thank God, hard to remember how thoroughly the disease of IPA Obsession was upon us but the headlong scramble to make the Next Big Deal in India Pale Ales trumped everything in brewing, including common sense and good judgment.

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HERE